Please
turn with me to Luke 13:18-21. This morning we are
focused on potential - the potential of what God can do
working in and through us.

Imagine
this: On Day One - two friends get together and decide
to form an Internet company. They call it “YouHoo.com” -
its a search engine with some unique ideas and
potential.

On Day
Two they go public with their stock - and the stock
sells for a modest $15 per share.

On Day
Three their stock is selling for $250 a share and going
up. Remember - they haven’t produced a product - they
have no employees - in fact they don’t even have an
office. All they have is the potential of what they’re
going to do.

On Day
Four they sell their company to a large foreign computer
company and each make $50 million on the deal.

This
could only happen in Silicon Valley - and thinking about
companies like “ebay” and “intel” and others - its not
too far from reality.

Potential.

In Luke
13:18-21 - Jesus illustrates the potential of God’s
working in us and through us. As we come to verse 13 -
I’d like to back up just a little to verse 10 and set
the scene for what Jesus is about to say.

It was
the Sabbath and Jesus was teaching in a synagogue -
speaking with the people there - when He became aware of
a woman in the crowd. This woman had been sick -
suffering with a crippling disease for 18 years.

When
Jesus saw her, He called her over to Himself - put His
hand on her - and said to her, “Woman, you are free
from your sickness!” And immediately she
straightened herself up - completely healed - and began
to praise God.

When the
men in charge of the synagogue saw what had happened
they became very angry because Jesus had healed this
woman on the Sabbath. And they began to explain to the
crowd just what Jesus had done wrong.

They
said, “There are six days in which we should work;
so come during those days and be healed, but not on
the Sabbath.”

Jesus
answers them, “You hypocrites! Any one of you would
take his ox or donkey out to give it water on the
Sabbath - what about this woman - one of God’s own
people who’s been sick for 18 years - why shouldn’t
she be healed on the Sabbath?” - “What’s more
important a donkey or a human being?”

The
synagogue leaders were humiliated by His answer - and
they should have been.

Jesus
holds up the entirety of the Kingdom of God - all of the
potential of what God is doing and can do in our lives -
holds it right up in front of the faces of these
synagogue officials - and says here it is. And their
response? Sorry, it doesn’t fit our understanding of
things. We just don’t see it. We’d rather trust what we
know and believe.

In Luke
13:18-21 - in response to the blindness of these
synagogue officials - Jesus gives two practical
illustrations of what the Kingdom of God is like for
those who choose to trust Him. Look there with me.

Luke
13:18-21: He - Jesus - said therefore, “What
is the kingdom of God like? And to what shall I
compare it? It is like a grain of mustard seed which a
man took and sowed in his garden; and it grew and
became a tree, and the birds of the air made nests in
its branches.” And again He said, “To what shall I
compare the kingdom of God? It is like leaven -
yeast - which a woman took and hid in three measures
of meal, till it was all leavened..”

The first
illustration is about a mustard seed. Its an
illustration about what happens when we place our trust
in God.

Jesus
compares the Kingdom of God to a small mustard seed -
that grows to become taller and larger than all the
other plants in the garden - offering shade to people
below - and branches for birds to build their nests.

Potentially
a mustard seed might grow-up to be a plant about 8 to 10
feet in height - given all the right growing conditions.
But even if then it would be a thin - scraggly thing.
There’s no way it would support even a bird’s nest. Its
nothing like what Jesus describes.

Jesus is
emphasizing the great potential of the seed when
cultivated by God. A very small mustard seed grows
unnaturally - supernaturally - into a tall shady tree.
That’s the potential of the Kingdom of God.

Today, we
look backwards through almost 2,000 years of church
history and tradition and it would be so easy to think
that all of that is what Jesus was talking about. The
spread of Christianity over the earth. The dominance of
Christianity in the west. Centuries of theological
debate and study. All the religious knowledge we have
today.

Its easy
for us to focus on the outward activity of the Christian
religion - and think that the spread of Christianity
means that God’s Kingdom is growing. We’re easily
impressed with size and influence and power. If
attendance is good - if the budget is large - if the
building is paid for - that’s success - that’s the
Kingdom of God growing.

Even here
- when we have ministry events - or our Sunday Service
of Worship - when someone asks, “How was it?”
The question that's usually being asked is, “How
many people were there?”

Jesus
said that the Kingdom of God is not all this external
religion. The Kingdom of God is people - people of faith
- who have a relationship with Jesus Christ. The
potential of the Kingdom of God is realized in our lives
when we are willing to trust God.

We look
around and see our nation - Apostolic or Evangelical -
and those who rarely - if ever - come to a church -
people who are trusting in external religion - tradition
- ethnicity - but they don’t know Jesus. There’s a
concern we share for our Armenian nation - and the
communities in which we live. We want to pray and work
that they would come to trust in Jesus as their Savior.

But what
influence - what potential - does a small group of
believers have amongst the thousands of Armenians in the
Bay Area? What influence can the Evangelical reformation
have as a small percentage of the Armenian nation? Who
are we - in the communities where we live - the places
where we work? When we speak out in faith - we
experience resistance - ridicule - indifference - its
hard to follow Jesus.

So often
we focus on the small seed - small and alone in the
world. We focus on the seed and forget to visualize the
potential of the tree - of what God wants to do in us
and through us. In the mustard seed there is a
tremendous potential for growth.

The seed
is small. But, what does Jesus say? The seed is
supernaturally becoming the Kingdom of God. God will
water it - nurture it - God will bring growth to it.

To this
church - to those who struggle in prayer and service -
who seek to live Godly lives in this society - these
words mean that we are to carry on - move forward in
faith - because God is bringing about His Kingdom. That
faith - in God’s hands - will become a tall - thriving -
mustard tree - and He will call His people from every
nation to come and nest in its branches.

Second -
Jesus speaks of leaven - yeast - the influence we have
on others.

In verse
20 - A woman takes some leaven and hides it in a large
tub of flour - after time it changes all the flour -
penetrates it - so that all the flour is leavened.
There’s inherent potential in the yeast to infect the
flour. Just as there is potential for the people of God
to transform this world.

The Bible
speaks of leaven in two ways. I think Jesus has both in
mind here. First, leaven is often symbolic of sin -
people and actions that are disobedient to the will of
God. Second, leaven is yeast - its the ingredient that
makes dough rise - expand. That’s a good thing.

Our
actions are like leaven - they’re infectious - they
influence others - either for evil or for good. We may
not think that what we do is really all that important -
but according to Jesus, it is.

The words
that we say to our brothers and sisters in Christ - or
what we say about each other - what we say about God’s
ministry - the words we speak when we’re not a church -
people hear. Our commitment to worship and obey God -
the priority He has in our lives - people watch how we
live our lives.

If
everything that we are is given to God - trusting Him -
living in obedience to Him - we can be leaven that
brings people closer to God - that attracts people to
His ministry here. We can be leaven that seeks to build
up His Church - that He can use to enlarge His Kingdom
and bring others to salvation.

The
religious leaders - and most of the people listening to
Jesus - didn’t understand what He was offering them.
They missed the potential of God’s working in them and
through them.

Many were
very religious - observing all the external effects and
regulations of their religion. Ethnically they were Jews
- and in the same way that many Armenians claim to be
Christian because we’re a Christian nation - many of the
Jews believed that their relationship with God was okay
because they were His chosen people.

But the
bottom line - is that entrance into the Kingdom of God
is by choice. Being a part of the Kingdom of God doesn’t
happen because of our physical birth or because we’re
raised in the church and lived Christian lives. Entrance
into God’s Kingdom - and all the potential of what that
means - comes when we individually choose to receive
Jesus as our Savior - to live trusting God with our
lives now and for eternity.